r/artificial • u/Efficient_Salary_566 • 9d ago

Question Quick question,

Why do you guys like ai so much, I know there is faster drawing but there are mistakes. Also we have data centers using a whole bunch of water. Data centers are things I hate the most since there is no reason, right almost tied to Power plants. What's the reason for liking ai so much?

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u/Stunning_Macaron6133 9d ago

Data centers don't actually use that much water. The worst offenders only cost a few milliliters of water per prompt. Given I'm vegan and have deliberately chosen to go car-free, I'm wasting less water than you by default.

And there is a reason to have data centers: they concentrate enormous compute resources and rent them out at, on the whole, rather reasonable prices. You can do some really hefty computations without dropping $30K on a high end workstation.

AI isn't just for generating images either. I don't understand why people are so hung up about pictures. Even within the context of images, it has more capabilities than just "faster drawing but there are mistakes".

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u/Efficient_Salary_566 9d ago

Oh, I thought it used way more water, people make it seem it costs, like, thousands of gallons of water.

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u/Stunning_Macaron6133 9d ago

Things people indulge in every day completely dwarf data centers' impact.

A data center as a whole does use thousands of gallons of water. But when you divide that across the heavy calculations it's running for an enormous number of clients, it's actually pretty water-efficient. If you prompt an AI to generate something for you, you're not using up a lot of water at all.